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Swarthmore is small and tight-knit. They are very careful about who they let in not just academically, but also culturally. This drives down the acceptance rate, and the Swarthmore acceptance rate for the Class of 2029 was only when you average out the higher Early Decision rate of admission and the much lower Regular Decision acceptance rate.

Northeastern is a prestigious private research university, and they receive about 100,000 applications for first-year admission each year. The first-year acceptance rate for the Class of 2029 on the flagship Boston campus was , a jump of half a percentage point from the previous year.

Johns Hopkins University is a highly-respective and equally selective private research university that has soared in selectiveness in recent years. Most recently, for the Class of 2029, the first-year acceptance rate was .

Boston College is a private research university with Jesuit origins and a welcoming community. They received nearly 40,000 applications for the , and the acceptance rate was only 13.9%. However, if you read the in March 2025, before decision day and any waitlist action, the acceptance rate was 12.6%. This helps us identify that BC admitted approximately 1% of the first year class from the waitlist.

The first-year rate of acceptance at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is extremely program-specific. Some programs are exceedingly difficult to get into, while others are more accessible. Of course, they don’t publicize many of these details, though. The overall reported acceptance rate is about , and they have received upwards of 33,000 applications in recent years for just 1,800 spots in the first-year class.

Pomona College aims for a first-year class of 450, but sometimes it takes some finessing to get there. Pomona admissions says that they waitlist of Regular Decision applicants, and the Pomona waitlist has been slowly growing. For students enrolling for fall 2023, there were students on the waitlist. The next year, the list had students hoping for a spot. And in the 2025-2026 Common Data Set, Pomona 716 of 1017 waitlisted students chose to accept the offer to wait and see.

Rice University is a highly-selective private research university in Houston, Texas and an acceptance rate. For admission in the fall of 2024, Rice offered nearly 4,000 students a spot on the waitlist — nearly twice as many students as they had even accepted. The desire of applicants to get in wasn’t hampered by the waitlist decision, though. Of that group of students offered a place on the waitlist, even more students than were accepted, 2,794, chose to join the waitlist. Eventually, were offered a spot in the first-year class.

Notre Dame is one of the most famed private research universities — and athletic powerhouses — in the country, and they have experienced a significant uptick in applications over the last few years. The acceptance rate for the Class of 2029, in fact, fell to . This marks the continuation of an aggressive trend, as the acceptance rate for Notre Dame has “dropped roughly 15% in the last decade.”

Amherst College is a small school with a mighty reputation. Getting in is predictably difficult. For the Class of 2029, they received a record number of application () and admitted about 7%, or 1,175 students.

Middlebury is a highly-selective and equally highly-regarded liberal arts program with a low acceptance rate: for the Class of 2029 and 2029.5, which includes students who start in the second semester. The waitlist numbers for that class have not been released yet, but recent historical data does help us decode the situation with the Middlebury waitlist.

Over a little more than a decade, Barnard has transformed from a lesser-known all-women’s backdoor into a Columbia University degree into a prestigious college in its own right with the low acceptance rate to match (). Throughout this transformation, the college has always offered an outstanding education and community steps from the Columbia gates — it’s just super competitive now.